Clouded Fires Drawing Deep
by MyMagentaPeach
Summary: It is an unexpected connection Kurt and Quinn find with each other. And Kurt ends up confining in her about his fears of losing Blaine to Sebastian.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Glee.

**A/N: **

Can be read in connection with **'The Burning Taste Of Blackened Air.' **I don't know what it is about Quinn that inspires these kind of titles to stories, but I surely won't ever complain.

So I went to work on some entirely different story, and then looking for that piece of writing in my most used and nagged notebook, I came across one of the many notes I scribble down and it screamed first Quinn and then Kurt at me, and I could not decide, luckily I'd say now, because then this came pouring out of me.

I have had thoughts before on how fantastic a storyline and a character development their friendship would be.

If you like it let me know, and if my mind gives me any say in this I think I would quite like to write more Kuinn. Or Qurt? I like Kuinn better.

Yes, **Klainebows and Quirrelmort**, there are quite possibly traces of our most recent conversation woven into this piece of writing. Thank you for the inspiration.

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><p><strong>Clouded Fires Drawing Deep<br>**

Her head is pounding with the pulsing flow of her unshed tears.

Breathing is out of the question as she keeps trying to focus on the words spoken next to her.

Quinn thinks that before at least she had been able to see herself in others, to find parts she could attach and take away easily. Sure they never felt like they actually belonged to her, were part of her, but at least, at least…nothing had felt so alien before as _everything_ does now. Kurts words, even looks are something entirely different. Not at all alien but equally frightening to Quinn.

She had smiled at Sam stating she seemed okay. Ever since the final school days before Christmas and New Years, that had been the last thing she had seemingly convincingly managed to attach to herself for that one night, barely making it through.

Now there is silence sitting in her room with her, and Kurt. Silence, to Kurt a feeling highly associated with pain. Singing in the beginning had been for much more than fun, still is. But only Blaine knows, and Kurt will not change that anytime soon.

They share, learn from each other, and Kurt has learned from Blaine, of all people, that you need to give others time, moments, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours to just breathe. The jumpy, happy, upbeat face he shows all others being only one side to Blaine. Like his bitchy one had been for Kurt, for a long _long_ time, another thing he has in common with Quinn. And like with Blaine and his kind of double life, split something or else, Kurt sometimes cannot help but worry that he is the only one who knows about Blaine or Quinn.

Yes, sure, everybody hurts sometimes, but this, it is something that goes much deeper. With Blaine as much as with Quinn.

When Kurt looks up and over at Quinn again, sitting, a little distance between them, next to her on her bed, wondering if she still wants to talk, like she said on the phone, she seems to have completely forgotten he is there at all. Staring ahead, Kurt doubts at anything in particular.

Quinn is thinking, about herself. All distractions the radio, the Tv and computer, even the small electric fire Finn had once given her, and that she even after they stopped dating had switched on many times for company, for movement, for light in these walls, is switched off.

Of course it had never spent any warmth to begin with, not in the literal sense anyway, but right now she misses it.

Not only the distraction of the artificial flames flickering, but the comfort it had spent her mind, making her feel like someone understood that all of the warmth in her life had been pretend.

Putting on a fake smile filled with fake warmth that was just about warm enough to not be seen for the pretend it was. She had learned something from her parents after all.

Why had she wanted Beth back again? Right, she hated feeling out of control. Well, that might have been the first impulse, but, there was more. Quinn can feel it, if only now she could find the thoughts to know for sure. For herself at least.

And then it hits her. She had been afraid, still is, her daughter might end up in a home entirely void, drained of all genuine feeling.

And all of a sudden she is thinking of Finn, who had cared, in a way, or so she still tells herself. The thought of Finn, who had made her feel _something_ at least, even if it never had been love, causes the first tears to fall.

Quinn wishes she could have loved him. She had held on to him for so long because he seemed to feel something real for her, even if he had never known how to really show it, nor she how to reciprocate.

A small smile flickers over her face. Finn, who had been bad at romance from the get go. It had not mattered back then, but it was all history now anyway. Puck too, and Sam. All love anyone might ever have felt for her history.

All had moved on from her. And then suddenly there had been Beth, back in her life. Someone who would not know better than to love, would not know worse. Could not know if what was done to her was good or bad; should be responded to with joy or tears. And it had scared Quinn.

Others saw Beth's cuteness, her tiny feet, her small hands, her little smiles. Puck does. Shelby too. All of the Glee Club does really, evident when Shelby had brought her to rehearsal, just before Christmas, now that the two show choirs were joined up again.

All Quinn could see was not cutness but helplessness. Beth was the picture of vulnerability. And Quinn, fearful of letting go of anything or anyone that somehow had once belonged into her life had had herself convinced she needed to fight, to at least try and keep Beth safe. And at the time the only way to do so had seemed to claim her back, to keep her close and away from all potential harm.

Thinking back to the day she had connected eyes with Kurt in the choir room and seen worry for the young child in them too, her daughter, a stranger to Kurt, the moment that had changed something between them forever, has Quinn snap out of her thoughts and remember in this moment the boy is sitting right next to her.

"I still have to figure out why I backed off in the end. What changed? Shelby had told me I was being selfish, and I really had not meant to be. The contrary."

"What made you think Beth might have it bad with her?" Kurt softly asks.

"It was not a thought, more a feeling, fear."

Kurt nods, moving closer, right next to Quinn and taking her in his arms. Quinn leaning with a heavy sigh into Kurt's embrace.

Some days after Shelby had brought Beth to rehearsal – which he had thought cruel knowing Quinn would be there – he had seen Quinn looking so torn and unhappy after the confrontation with Sue about helping out at the homeless shelter, he had walked up to her. And they had talked, about Kurt being unsure what to do himself, and Quinn unhappy with Artie's decision. They had talked for quite a while, really talked for the first time ever.

Both equally shocked and surprised, how, when all pretences and ideologies were stripped away they understood, truly understood each other. They had never expected to, so never tried.

Here they were, comforting each other once again. Never had Kurt thought he would ever be in this position, sitting on Quinn's bed, holding her tight, now talking, both of them, about their absent mothers. Although absent in very different ways it had left them with feelings so similar.

With Burt being so distant for years Kurt too had felt for a long time like he might not know how to be a loving and caring anything to anyone. The coming out and then Blaine had changed that, a lot of it, but both were changes still so recent "…and feelings like that, worries and pain like that, do not just disappear. I know it isn't fair Quinn but we will just have to work harder than others on trusting and loving and caring. And we might fail. But I guess everyone has that problem, although probably not everyone worries about it."

"You have Blaine, and you are happy together, and…"

Kurt cuts in, "…and I am afraid to lose him almost every day lately."

Quinn looks surprised and alarmed at the same time, "Why? What happened?"

"There is this guy, at Dalton, who has told me pointblank he will try to break us up. He talks like it's all just a big joke to him, a game."

"Blaine loves _you_."

"I know. But even that can some days not take away the fear."

"Too deep?" Quinn asks, and it has kind of become a secret code between them already, for all they feel but don't know how to think or say just yet. It is also a promise to help the other to try and work it out.

So Kurt, rubbing a hand comfortingly along Quinn's shoulder, a not forced but nevertheless slightly pained smile on his lips, staring ahead himself now echoes "Too deep."


End file.
